Author
Topic: Hello from Illinois (Read 1036 times)

I am a brand new beekeeper, along with my wife and 9 year-old daughter. We started keeping two hives this spring, started from purchased packages. Both hives are currently set up with two deep hive boxes and three medium supers. We managed one harvest this season yielding a total of about 150 pounds. We are constantly learning from our bees, as well as books, webinars, YouTube and a couple local beekeepers. We are looking forward to next spring even though we are nervous about our first winter. We are looking for ANY advice, plans for hive components or links to other great spots on the web to help us advance our knowledge. I hope to gain a lot by being a member of this forum and hope to some day be able to contribute to those who are in my place now.

Welcome to the forum, Chris! You're going to love it here. I'm an as-yet hiveless newbie (will start next spring), but have been hanging around here since June and learned a ton. The search function is excellent for finding older posts on any topic and the responses to my questions have been answered quickly and thoroghly.

Where in Chi-Town are you? I live in Skokie. Have you met the Windy City Beekeepers or the bee folks at Garfield Park Conservatory? Also, it's a long drive, but the Cook-DuPage Beekeepers Association meetings look like they are good opportunities to learn and meet area beekeepers. I attended the September meeting, but it was mostly election of new officers, and this month's meeting is their annual banquet. I'll probably attend the November meeting.

Feel free to contact me privately and I can share some more sources of local bee info. :bee: :bee: